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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Honestly, I have used better Linux distros than Ubuntu. But, I don't deny that Canonical's Ubuntu took Linux to the masses. Five years ago when I started using Linux, I started with Ubuntu as well. Those days none of my friends knew about Linux and now almost everyone of my friends knows Ubuntu, if not any other Linux. And even in my blog, articles on Ubuntu gets 30% more hits than non-Ubuntu articles. And the request for this article came from quite a few readers of my blog. Here I won't compare a lot on the aesthetics bit as each distro is unique and it is good to have diversity. My primary focus will be on comparing performance and ease of use.

I reviewed each and every one of the official Utopic Unicorn releases separately. If interested you can visit individual reviews:

All 5 Ubuntu releases have similar installation steps though the installer may look marginally different in case of Kubuntu. The steps are pretty simple and should not take more than 10-30 minutes of your time depending upon your internet connection.

Step 1: Choose language

Step 2: Check if it meets the minimum requirement and manually check download updates while installing and install third party software. Installing third party software is critical to play multimedia files and watch online videos in YouTube. If you are not an expert in Linux, please check this.

Ubuntu has the most intuitive installation process and it works every time I have used. I guess it should not challenge even novice users.

Aesthetics

Each of the five distros are unique and look different from each other. Ubuntu 14.10 has Unity 7.3.1 desktop environment and has an unique look with a blank desktop and left hand side panel. Ubuntu's customization options are rather less than other four. Ubuntu Tweak tool comes really handy in this regard.

Kubuntu 14.10 should look familiar to Windows 7 users. I used both KDE 4.14.1 and KDE Plasma 5 in my review. Plasma 5 with flat icons looks simply stunning and should appeal to Windows 8 users. KDE 4.14 has countless themes and user customization options available across the internet. You can practically make it look whatever way you like it to be.

Both Xubuntu and Lubuntu are comparatively lightweight operating systems and they look visually less appealing than Ubuntu or Kubuntu. But, experienced users can tweak them appropriately to make them look better.

Ubuntu GNOME looks very refined and supports some customization option. I found a lot of aesthetically appealing themes across the internet for GNOME 3 which works with Ubuntu GNOME 14.10. Further, Tweak tool is there to tinker around with default settings and add GNOME extensions.

I would score or rank order the distros on aesthetics. I leave it to you to decide which one looks best to you.

Hardware Recognition

All of the Ubuntu distros recognize hardware impeccably without any issue. Screen resolution, sound, WIFI, LAN, touch pad, etc. worked perfectly without any issue for all the five distros. I was able to successfully install NVIDIA prime or bumblebee on each of them.

Pre-Installed Packages

Applications

Ubuntu 14.10

Kubuntu 14.10

Xubuntu 14.10

Lubuntu 14.10

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10

Office

LibreOffice 4.3.2.2

LibreOffice 4.3.2.2

Abiword 3.0.0, Gnumeric 1.12.17

Abiword 3.0.0, Gnumeric 1.12.17

LibreOffice 4.3.2.2

PDF Viewer

Document viewer

Okular

Document viewer

Document viewer

Document viewer

Browser

Firefox 33, Ubuntu browser

Firefox 33

Firefox 33

Firefox 33

Firefox 33

Email Client

Thunderbird 33

Kmail

Thunderbird 33

Sylpheed

Evolution

Torrent Downloader

Transmission

Ktorrent

Transmission

Transmission

Transmission

Instant Messenger

Empathy

KDE IM

Pidgin

Pidgin

Empathy

Photo viewer

Image viewer, Shotwell

Gweview

Ristretto

Image Viewer

Image viewer, Shotwell

GIMP/Photo editor

-

-

GIMP 2.8.10

mtPaint

-

Screenshot

Screenshot

Ksnapshot

Screenshot

-

Screenshot

Audio Player

Rhythmbox 3.0.3

Amarok

gmusicbrowser

Audacious

Rhythmbox 3.0.3

Video Player

Videos 3.10.1

Dragon

Parole

Gnome Mplayer

Videos 3.10.1

CD/DVD writer

Brasero

K3b

Xfburn

Xfburn

Brasero

Live USB Creator

Startup Disk Creator

Startup Disk Creator

-

Startup Disk Creator

-

File Manager

Files 3.10.1

Dolphin 4.14.1

Thunar 1.6.3

PCManFM 1.2.3

Files 3.10.1

Integrated Settings Manager

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME ship with full LibreOffice whereas the lightweight Xubuntu and Lubuntu ship with Abiword and Gnumeric. However, complete LibreOffice suite can be installed from Ubuntu repositories.

Image editors like GIMP is pre-installed only in Xubuntu. Lubuntu has mtPaint, a lightweight image editor with limited functionality. Similarly, startup disk creator, a software to create bootable live USBs, is missing in Xubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME while present in the other three.

Integrated settings manager is present in all, barring Lubuntu. So, if you are a Linux novice, Lubuntu may give you a hard time if everything doesn't work well from the beginning. Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME has the best integrated settings managers followed by Xubuntu.

Anyway, these are minor differences that I am pointing out. Mostly the distros try to provide the common applications required for regular use and anything you need extra, can be downloaded from the Ubuntu Utopic repositories.

Each of these distros have a package manager with GUI like Ubuntu Software Center (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME), Lubuntu Software Center and Muon Discover (Kubuntu). They are easy to use and have good search options. Only Lubuntu has Synaptic Package Manager in addition. I like Synaptic as it works faster than other package managers.

Performance
Perhaps the most important section and the results you have been eagerly waiting for. I divide the section into three parts: Resource usage (RAM, CPU), Power Usage and Boot time.

Performance

Ubuntu 14.10

Kubuntu 14.10

Xubuntu 14.10

Lubuntu 14.10

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10

RAM Usage (MB)

599

547

350

246

515

CPU Usage

0-5%

0-5%

0-5%

0-5%

0-5%

Boot time (Seconds)

33

34

31

30

39

Power Usage (Watts)

12.06

12.31

11.67

10.21

11.21

Space Occupied (GB)

4.6

4.6

4.3

4

4.8

Resource Usage
As expected, Lubuntu is the least RAM hungry distro followed by Xubuntu. Lubuntu consumes about 250 MB RAM at steady state with no application except system monitor running. Under identical conditions and on the same laptop, Lubuntu consumes 30% lower RAM than Xubuntu, 52% lower RAM than Ubuntu GNOME, 55% lower RAM than Kubuntu and 59% lower RAM than Ubuntu 14.10.

Ubuntu GNOME is the third most efficient distro with a RAM consumption in low 500 MBs. Both Kubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.10 consume nearly 600 MB RAM under identical conditions and on the same machine.

Power Consumption
Even on power consumption, Lubuntu 14.10 tops the list for being the most efficient. Lubuntu consumes 9% less power than Ubuntu GNOME 14.10, 13% lower power than Xubuntu. Kubuntu is the most power hungry followed by Ubuntu.

Disk Space
All the distros occupy around 4-5 GB of space and nothing really there to separate between them.

Overall
So, in nutshell, I found Lubuntu 14.10 to be the best in performance among the Ubuntu distros. It offered me trouble free experience throughout my usage and I found it to be really stable. Anyone looking for a really really efficient distro and those with low powered machines can safely bet on Lubuntu 14.10

Based on my experience, I found Ubuntu GNOME to be the second best offering very decent performance with a very refined desktop environment. I thought Xubuntu would occupy this position but unfortunately, a bit of instability in the distro marred my experience. I would safely recommend Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 to users with modern laptop with or without touchscreen over the rest of the four distros.

As usual Kubuntu is the slowest of the lot and consumes the most power. You can expect the least battery life from Kubuntu. However, the desktop environment (specially the Plasma 5 upgrade) is mind blowing! Those with powerful modern machines and less usage of battery power can safely choose Kubuntu as it seemed to be the most exciting of the lot.

Finally, Ubuntu 14.10. I would recommend users to download and install Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS with support till April 2019 rather than this almost similar distro. I didn't see much difference between the two and actually Ubuntu 14.04.1 performs a whole lot better on my laptop.

37 comments:

Amazing, I've been waiting for such a comparison. Could you also measure KDE 4.14 and Plasma 5 separately? I find P5 much more responsive but it's far from stable yet. And could you also add Ubuntu MATE to the comparison? It's quite snappy on my old Aspire One netbook and I guess it would be a direct competitor to Lubuntu.

Thanks. In fact, I am very disappointed and surprised by this result for Kubuntu. I haven't made a serious study on the topic but the last year i have done some tests with "upower" to check if my KDE+Kwin desktop was using more or less power than a lxde desktop, and it was pretty similar. I'll try again soon on ArchLinux.

This is a great article, thank you very much. I've been sampling a number of distros on Virtualbox but Lubuntu completely slipped my mind. I'll give it a go. I prefer lightweight OSes because I find flashy GUIs unnecessary and distracting.

I loved the unity unified bar, but in my netbook (a Pavilion DM1 3260BR) it is very slow, I am thinking about try luubuntu on it, or even a Mint Linux... any ideas? (btw, it is a APU AMD E350 with 8GB RAM)

I'm a big fan of lightweight OSes. Recently switch over to Linux, primarily Linux Mint, but still doing a little distro-hopping. I intend to crawl your blog for the info but if you haven't done so... would love to see the Ubuntu-family Champion, Lubuntu, go up against some other popular, lightweight distros. This is very useful information for owners of older computers, as well as owners of mid-range systems looking to get the most out of their setups.

Hi, I am running "LXLE" I downloaded and installed it. My choice over Ubuntu vanilla flavor is because it was said on the official site it worked on older machines and I am using a Lenovo g585 ideapad 4gig ram 320 HD.with amd processor. Did I make a wise choice?

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